Machines and systems for digging trenches are an ancient form of technology. Persons involved in the construction of buildings and other civil engineering projects recognized literally centuries ago the value in reducing the back breaking labor associated with forming trenches in soil, gravel, and other types of materials. Many different types of animal and steam powered systems were proposed long ago to assist in elevating material from the floor of a trench to reduce the need for, and risks associated with, manual labor. In more recent times, increasingly sophisticated hydraulically and pneumatically powered mechanisms have been developed.
Trenching systems from approximately the middle to the latter part of the twentieth century were often designed to provide a tremendous amount of brute force for cutting through and displacing large volumes of material in a relatively short amount of time. Backhoes and other types of heavy equipment commonly seen at construction sites are a familiar example of systems available to contractors for relatively rapid and effective displacement of large volumes of material for forming all manner of trenches. The formation of trenches for utility pipes or lines, and for the subsurface preparation of building foundation systems are common instances where such heavy equipment is used.
Despite advances in trenching equipment technology and the wide availability of different trench forming attachments in recent decades, there remains room for improvement. The “brute force” approaches discussed above are well suited for moving a large amount of material relatively quickly. Once a relatively large trench is roughly prepared, however, extensive manual and/or mechanized post-digging steps are often necessary before the trench is made suitable for its intended purposes. A more refined approach is thus desirable in some instances, which would reduce the necessary post-digging activities.
One instance where a more elegant approach is desirable relates to the preparation of trenches for building foundation systems in which a compound footing and stem wall structure is to be built. Such foundation systems are often best designed with a relatively narrow poured concrete stem segment which transitions to a relatively broad footing segment. The footing segment may include a horizontally extending body of poured concrete, positioned below the ground surface typically below the frost line. The stem segment is typically a vertically extending poured concrete body which is continuous with the footing segment and projects upwardly toward and beyond the ground surface to provide a monolithic support upon which a structure may be built.
Probably the most common approach to preparing a trench for pouring of a monolithic compound concrete footing is to dig an overly large trench, and then build concrete forms within the trench, pour the concrete, remove the forms and then back-fill soil, etc. around the vertically extending stem portion of the monolithic concrete and over the footing section. The extensive manual labor required to perform such procedures needs no further explanation. Various designs have been proposed over the years for digging a footing trench having a suitable cross sectional shape such that form building and backfilling are not necessary. Such systems, however, tend to be relatively complex and certainly quite expensive.
The present disclosure is directed to one or more of the problems or shortcomings set forth above.